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Julia Vipsania Agrippina better known as Agrippina the Elder, was the youngest daughter of Marcus Vipsanius Agrippa and Julia Augusti, daughter of Caesar Augustus. She was her Agrippa's favourite daughter and her Augustus' favourite granddaughter. She is considered one of the greatest women to have played a part of history, possesing both virtue, strength and beauty. She was also the mother of Caligula and Agrippina the Younger (Mother of Nero). Agrippina was married to Germanicus, heir to the throne of Rome, but he was murdered during the rein of Tiberius, Agrippina's step-father (Germanicus' uncle). He eventurally murdered Agrippina's sons and banished her to Pandataria where she starved to death.

Agrippina Yakovlevna Vaganova was a Russian ballet teacher who developed the Vaganova method - the technique which derived from the teaching methods of the old Imperial Ballet School (today the Vaganova Academy of Russian Ballet) under the Maître de Ballet Marius Petipa throughout the mid to late 19th century, though mostly throughout the 1880s and 1890s.

Agrippina the Elder, the wife of Germanicus and the mother of Caligula and Agrippina the Younger, was a notoriously fiery, ambitious woman whose volatile temper eventually sealed her fate (she openly blamed Emperor Tiberius, Germanicus' adoptive father, for her husband's suspicious death); her two eldest sons were forced to commit suicide while she starved herself to death.

Agrippina the Younger, who saw two of her three brothers die disgraced and allegedly suffered incest with her sisters at the hands of Caligula, was Emperor Nero's mother. Ambitious, amoral, and determined to climb to the top with her son, she allegedly committed incest with Nero to keep control over him.

In either case, Agrippina sounds like a name for a strong, determined, potentially ruthless woman.

I did a little research and I was surprised to find out that despite Agrippina's negative influence, her name is still used in a number of Catholic countries, Italy included. This is due to another Agrippina - a 3rd-century saint from Sicily. Most Agrippinas in the modern era are probably named after the saint as opposed to the Roman empress. [noted -ed]